A New World

It is fashionable to say that the world changed on September 11, 2001 with the attacks on the World Trade Center.  Columnist David Shribman says, "the old rules ... no longer apply to the crises of American national security."  Why?  Those attacks were not the first time terrorists had ever attacked somebody.  Islamist terrorism has been around for decades.  People were dying by the hundreds and thousands long before the Trade Center was even built.   The United States was confronting terror long before 9/11.

What were the "old rules"?  According to Shribman, "From the dawning of America's engagement in World War I until the evening of Sept. 10, 2001, American presidents worried about other nations, their leaders, their weapons and the stability of those nations and their leaders."  The idea is that the world is no longer driven by competition and struggles between nations, struggles addressed by statecraft and diplomacy.

Yet, is terrorism not merely an extension of that old model? In decades past, a nation might confront its enemies directly on the field of battle.  Take, for example, the Arab confrontation with Israel throughout the early decades of that nation's existence.  Today, those same nations might confront their same enemies via the proxy of terrorism, as Syria continues to confront Israel, but today through terrorist groups.  Islamic fundamentalists have confronted the West directly before, once they got political power in nations like Iran and Libya.  Now, they use terrorists.  The fundamental problem is the same, just expressed in a different way.

Shribman wants to argue that presidents starting with the current one no longer view the world as a competition between nations.  Yet both of the current president's responses in the so-called war on terror have been directed against nations, Afghanistan and Iraq.  The issue behind both wars was the leadership and, it the case of Iraq, weaponry of those countries.

The only thing that has changed since 9/11 is that the United States is no longer as naïve as it had been.  We are no longer deluded into believing our economic and military strength will protect us absolutely.  The world has not changed.  To say that it has is to reflect just how naïve we were before 9/11.